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You asked, we answered: introducing the AskScience Reading List! We asked our experts what science books they recommend. While this list is a work in progress, we've posted it in hopes that it will help our readers find interesting an enlightening material.
A few tips:
Books are arranged alphabetically by author. Click the column headers to sort by title or skill level.
Books are broken down into the same categories we use for posts, with an additional section for children's books.
We'd like to thank to our panelists for their helpful recommendations!
Skill levels
Introductory: Suitable for a first read on a subject or light, easy reading. Written solely for a lay audience.
Intermediate: Slightly more technical. Longer, denser, and possibly includes more jargon.
Advanced: Technical reading aimed at a scientific audience. Some background in the subject is recommended.
Physics
| Title | Author | Skill Level | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| The particle at the end of the universe | Sean Carroll | Introductory | A good description of the search for the Higgs boson. |
| Relativity: The Special and General Theory | Albert Einstein | Intermediate | A great physics book with a very clear, conceptual explanation while still backing it up with math. |
| The Character of Physical Law | Richard Feynman | Introductory | |
| QED | Richard Feynman | Intermediate | |
| Time Travel in Einstein's Universe | J. Richard Gott | Introductory | |
| Fabric of the Cosmos | Brian Greene | Intermediate | |
| The Elegant Universe | Brian Greene | Intermediate | |
| In Search of Schrödinger's Cat | John Gribbin | Introductory | Nontechnical introduction to quantum mechanics |
| The Universe in a Nutshell | Stephen Hawking | Introductory | |
| The God Particle | Leon Lederman | Introductory | Every working physicist hates the title with a passion, but the book is very good. |
| Classical Mechanics | J. R. Taylor | Introductory | Undergraduate-level classical mechanics |
| Classical Mechanics | Goldstein, Poole, and Safko | Advanced | Graduate-level classical mechanics |
| Principles of Quantum Mechanics | R. Shankar | Advanced | Advanced undergraduate-level quantum mechanics |
| The Landau and Lifshitz series | L. Landau and E. Lifshitz | Advanced | Graduate-level physics |
| The Feynman Lectures | R. P. Feynman | Intermediate | |
| Introduction to Electrodynamics | D. J. Griffiths | Intermediate | Undergraduate-level classical electrodynamics |
| Classical Electrodynamics | J. D. Jackson | Advanced | Graduate-level classical electrodynamics |
| Introductory Nuclear Physics | K. Krane | Intermediate | Undergraduate-level nuclear physics |
| Quantum Field Theory in a Nutshell | A. Zee | Advanced | |
| Quantum Field Theory | F. Mandl and G. Shaw | Advanced | |
| An Introduction to Quantum Field Theory | M. Peskin and D. Schroeder | Advanced | Graduate-level quantum field theory |
| Thermal Physics | D. Schroeder | Intermediate | Undergraduate-level statistical mechanics and thermodynamics |
| Modern Quantum Mechanics | J. J. Sakurai and J. J. Napolitano | Advanced | Graduate-level quantum mechanics |
| Statistical Data Analysis | G. Cowan | Advanced | Graduate-level data analysis |
| Radiation Detection and Measurement | G. Knoll | Intermediate | |
| Mathematical Methods in the Physical Sciences | M. Boas | Intermediate | Undergraduate-level math methods |
Astronomy/Cosmology
| Title | Author | Skill Level | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Day We Found the Universe | Marcia Bartusiak | Introductory | |
| How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming | Mike Brown | Introductory | |
| From Eternity to Here | Sean Carroll | Advanced | Great if you already have some background in statistical mechanics and cosmology. It discusses in an easy to understand way the issues of information entropy in a universe with a beginning and the problem of Boltzmann brains. |
| Einstein's Telescope | Evalyn Gates | Intermediate | |
| A Brief History of Time | Stephen Hawking | Introductory | |
| Cosmos | Carl Sagan | Introductory | |
| Pale Blue Dot | Carl Sagan | Introductory | |
| The Copernicus Complex | Caleb Scharf | Introductory | |
| The Planets | Dava Sobel | Introductory | I really liked it and it was a great intro to the science, mythology, and history of each of the planets. |
| The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America's Favorite Planet | Neil deGrasse Tyson | Introductory | |
| The First Three Minutes | Steven Weinberg | Introductory | An introduction to physics and the early universe just after the big bang. |
| The End of Everything: (Astrophysically Speaking) | Katie Mack | Introductory | An introduction to cosmology and the ultimate fate of our Universe |
| Making Contact: Jill Tarter and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence | Sarah Scoles | Introductory | A biography of SETI pioneer Jill Tarter along with a dive into the science |
Earth Sciences
| Title | Author | Skill Level | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Two-Mile Time Machine | Richard Alley | Introductory | A really accessible and well-written introduction to ice cores as records of past environmental change and abrupt climate change. |
| A Short History Of Nearly Everything | Bill Bryson | Introductory | Surprisingly great and accessible book for an intro to / overview of earth sciences. |
| Silent Spring | Rachel Carson | Introductory | One of those books everyone pretends they read but no one ever actually does. They should. |
| The Sea Around Us | Rachel Carson. | Introductory | A bit dated but still good. |
| Geological Observations of Volcanic Islands | Charles Darwin | Intermediate | A little technical, but because the field was so juvenile back then it's mostly the dated writing that's hard to parse, rather than jargon. It's one of the first real attempts to describe volcanic islands and well worth a look. |
| The Science And Politics Of Global Climate Change: A Guide To The Debate | Andrew E. Dessler and Edward A. Parson | Introductory | |
| Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World | Mark Kurlansky | Oceanography | |
| How to Build a Habitable Planet | Charles Langmuir and Wally Broecker | Intermediate/Advanced | The first edition by just Broecker is probably more accessible to the layperson. The book marches through geochemistry from big bang to climate change - including the formation of the solar system, the Earth, the oceans - all from the perspective of isotope geochemistry. It's essentially the geochemical historical perspective of how Earth came to be the planet it is. |
| A Sand County Almanac | Aldo Leopold | Introductory | A series of essays by an icon in wildlife management and conservation biology. |
| Annals of the Former World | John McPhee | General geology | |
| To Follow the Water: Exploring the Ocean to Discover Climate | Dallas Murphy | Oceanography/climate science | |
| Life and Death of the Salt Marsh | John Teal and Mildred Teal | Environmental science | |
| The Map That Changed the World: A Tale of Rocks, Ruin and Redemption | Simon Winchester | Introductory | General geology |
| Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883 | Simon Winchester | Introductory | Volcanology |
| Jet Stream: A Journey Through our Changing Climate | Tim Woollings | A really great introduction to meteorology and climate. | Meteorology/climate science |
| The Goldilocks Planet | Jan Zalasiewicz | An introduction to long-term climate change and how conditions on Earth have been stabilised and remained suitable for life through its history. | Climate science |
| A Planet in a Pebble | Jan Zalasiewicz | A very clever introduction to Geology by discussing the geological history of Earth through observations you could make from a single pebble | Earth history |
Chemistry
| Title | Author | Skill Level | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Periodic Tales: A Cultural History of the Elements, from Arsenic to Zinc | Hugh Aldersey-Williams | Introductory | |
| Poison Squad | Deborah Blum | Introductory | |
| The Disappearing Spoon | Sam Kean | Introductory | One of the most accessible and interesting popular science books I have ever read. |
| Organic Chemistry | Vollhardt and Schore | Intermediate | Undergraduate-level organic chemistry textbook |
| Inorganic Chemistry | Miessler, Fischer, and Tarr | Intermediate | Undergraduate-level inorganic chemistry textbook |
| Inorganic Chemistry | Catherine E. Housecroft and Alan G. Sharpe | Intermediate | Undergraduate-level inorganic chemistry textbook |
| Quantitative Chemical Analysis | Daniel Harris | Intermediate | Undergraduate analytical chemistry textbook |
| Physical Chemistry: A Molecular Approach | McQuarrie and Simon | Intermediate | Undergraduate-level physical chemistry textbook |
| Principals of Instrumental Analysis | Skoog, Holler, and Crouch | Intermediate | Undergraduate instrumental chemistry textbook |
| Modern Nuclear Chemistry | Loveland, Morrissey, and Seaborg | Intermediate | Undergraduate-level nuclear chemistry textbook |
Biology
| Title | Author | Skill Level | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Why Evolution is True | Jerry Coyne | Introductory | The book describes the five different lines of evidence that in inescapably lead to common decent. I really like the way he goes through the evidence and shows how it leads to the complete theory of evolution. I feel too many science books just report the results of science without explaining the process or evidence. |
| On the Origin of Species | Charles Darwin | Intermediate | |
| The Greatest Show on Earth | Richard Dawkins | Probably the most relevant and current of Dawkins books. | |
| The Mismeasure of Man | Stephen Jay Gould (or basically anything else he wrote) | Intermediate | |
| The Eighth Day of Creation | Horace Freeland Judson | Advanced | An in-depth history of molecular biology. Only for the dedicated because it's kind of dry sometimes, but it's the kind of crazily well-researched history that I'm glad someone took the time to make. |
| The Violinist's Thumb: And Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius, as Written by Our Genetic Code | Sam Kean | Introductory | |
| Lab Girl | Hope Jahren | Introductory | |
| Supercooperators | Martin Nowak | Advanced | Despite its flaws, it is an interesting look at the evolution of altruism and communities. |
| What Makes Biology Unique | Ernst Mayr | Intermediate | |
| The Gene: An Intimate History | Siddhartha Mukherjee | Introductory | |
| Lives of a Cell | Lewis Thomas | ||
| The Trouble with Testosterone | Robert Sapolsky | ||
| What is Life | Erwin Schrodinger | Intermediate | |
| Your Inner Fish | Neil Shubin | Introductory | |
| Some Assembly Required | Neil Shubin | Introductory | |
| The Universe Within | Neil Shubin | Introductory | |
| The Dechronization of Sam Magruder: A Novel | George Gaylord Simpson | Introductory | Fiction, but offers a great perspective on evolution. |
| Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors | Nicholas Wade | Introductory | |
| The Malay Archipelago | Alfred Russel Wallace | Intermediate | Chronicles Wallace's travels, which led him to propose a theory of evolution by natural selection. Long, but well worth the read. |
| The Tangled Bank | Carl Zimmer | Introductory | |
| At the Water's Edge: Fish with Fingers, Whales with Legs, and How Life Came Ashore but Then Went Back to Sea | Carl Zimmer | Introductory | |
| The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time | Jonathan Weiner | Introductory |
Medicine
| Title | Author | Skill Level | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| A Country Doctor's Notebook | Mikhail Bulgakov | Introductory | Very old but extremely interesting. Lay-friendly. |
| Asleep: The Forgotten Epidemic that Remains One of Medicine's Greatest Mysteries | Molly Caldwell Crosby | Introductory | |
| Mountains Beyond Mountains | Paul Farmer | Introductory | |
| Emperor of All Maladies | Siddhartha Mukherjee | Intermediate | |
| The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks | Rebecca Skloot | Introductory |
Neuroscience
| Title | Author | Skill Level | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vehicles, Experiments in Synthetic Psychology | Valentino Braitenberg | Introductory | How complex behavior can emerge from simple circuits |
| Introduction to the Theory of Neural Computation | John Hertz, Anders Krogh, and Richard G. Palmer | Advanced |
Psychology
| Title | Author | Skill Level | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mental Models | Philip Johnson-Laird | Intermediate | |
| Thinking Fast and Thinking Slow | Daniel Kahneman | Introductory | |
| Cognitive Psychology | Ulric Neisser | Intermediate | |
| Cognition and Reality | Ulric Neisser | Intermediate | |
| The Language Instinct | Steven Pinker | Introductory | |
| How the Mind Works | Steven Pinker | Introductory | |
| The Stuff of Thought | Steven Pinker | Introductory | |
| The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat | Oliver Sacks | Introductory | |
| Awakenings | Oliver Sacks | Introductory | |
| The Mind's Eye | Oliver Sacks | Introductory |
Linguistics
| Title | Author | Skill Level | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Language Files: Materials for an Introduction to Language and Linguistics, 12th edition | Department of Linguistics at Ohio State University | Introductory | |
| Phonology: Theory and Description | Andrew Spencer | Intermediate | |
| Output-Driven Phonology | Bruce Tesar | Advanced |
Engineering
| Title | Author | Skill Level | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cats' Paws and Catapults | Steven Vogel | Intermediate | Vogel discusses various phenomena - flight, motion, flow, structure, etc. and compares the approaches taken by nature vs those taken by human engineering. |
| Introduction to Nuclear Engineering | John R. Lamarsh | Intermediate | |
| Introduction to Nuclear Reactor Theory | John R. Lamarsh | Advanced | |
| Rocket Propulsion Elements | P. Sutton and O. Biblarz | Intermediate | |
| Fundamentals of Electric Propulsion: Ion and Hall Thrusters | D. M. Goebel and I. Katz | Intermediate |
Computing
| Title | Author | Skill Level | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Elements of Information Theory | Thomas Cover and Joy Thomas | Intermediate | |
| Tubes | Andrew Blum | Introductory | Goes into the history and workings of the development of the internet. |
| The Most Human Human: What Artificial Intelligence Teaches Us About Being Alive | Brian Christian | Introductory | |
| What Is Mathematics? An Elementary Approach to Ideas and Methods | Richard Courant and Herbert Robbins | Introductory | |
| Introduction to Algorithms | Thomas H. Cormen, Charles E. Leiserson, Ronald L. Rivest and Clifford Stein | Intermediate | One of the best books on foundational algorithms out there. |
| Quantum Computation and Quantum Information | Nielsen & Chuang | Introductory | |
| Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective | Randal E. Bryant and David R. O'Hallaron | Intermediate | |
| The Art of Computer Programming | Donald Knuth | Intermediate | It doesn't require advanced background in the field, but some of the algorithmic descriptions have serious depth and require several readings to get through. |
| Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach | Peter Norvig and Stuart Russell | Intermediate | |
| The Visual Display of Quantitative Information | Edward Tufte | Introductory | |
| Algorithm Design | Jon Kleinberg and Éva Tardos | Intermediate to Advanced | |
| Learning From Data | Yaser S. Abu-Mostafa, Malik Magdon-Ismail, and Hsuan-Tien Lin | Intermediate to Advanced |
Mathematics
| Title | Author | Skill Level | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Knot Book | Colin Adams | Intermediate | An introduction to topology, the study of how spaces are connected, with knots. |
| A History of Pi | Petr Beckmann | Introductory | |
| Logicomix | Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos Papadimitriou | Introductory | Graphic novel following the life of Bertrand Russell |
| Gödel's Theorem: An Incomplete Guide to Its Use and Abuse | Torkel Franzen | Intermediate | A strong college level mathematics background is helpful to the reader. |
| Love and Math | Edward Frenkel | Intermediate | |
| Chaos: Making a New Science | James Gleick | Introductory | A brief history of chaos theory in dynamical systems. Also, fractals. |
| Godel, Escher, Bach | Douglas Hofstadter | Covers a number of topics in things like logic and cognition. | |
| Zero: The biography of a dangerous idea | Charles Seife | Introductory | |
| The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail - But Some Don't | Nate Silver | Introductory | |
| Fermat's Enigma | Simon Singh and John Lynch | Introductory | |
| The Code Book | Simon Singh | Introductory | |
| 17 Equations that Changed the World | Ian Stewart | It's not perfect, but I think it is difficult to summarise maths in any reasonable way for a lay reader, and what he does is better than any other attempt. | |
| Another Fine Math You've Got Me Into | Ian Stewart | Introductory | This book covers a number of isolated topics that left me thinking for a long time. |
| How To Solve It | Polya | Introductory |
Children's Books
| Title | Author | Skill Level | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Teacher at Sea: Miss Cook's Voyage on the RONALD H. BROWN | Mary Cook and Diane Stanitski, illustrated by Bruce Cowden | ||
| The Moon and You | E.C. Krupp, illustrated by Robin Rector Krupp | ||
| The Big Dipper and You | E.C. Krupp, illustrated by Robin Rector Krupp | ||
| A Comet and You | E.C. Krupp, illustrated by Robin Rector Krupp | ||
| Next Time You See the Moon | Emily Morgan | Elementary school | |
| Next Time You See a Sunset | Emily Morgan | Elementary school | |
| Next Time You See a Maple Seed | Emily Morgan | Elementary school | |
| Next Time You See a Sunset | Emily Morgan | Elementary school | |
| Next Time You See a Seashell | Emily Morgan | Elementary school | |
| Next Time You See a Pill Bug | Emily Morgan | Elementary school | |
| Next Time You See a Firefly | Emily Morgan | Elementary school | |
| Teacher at Sea: Mrs. Armwood's Hydrographic Adventure on the NOAA Ship FAIRWEATHER | Diane Stanitski, illustrated by Bruce Cowden | ||
| Teacher at Sea: Mr. Tanenbaum Explores Atlantic Fisheries on the NOAA Ship Henry B. Bigelow | Diane Stanitski and John Adler, illustrated by Bruce Cowden | ||
| Teacher in the Air: Dr. Diane's Flight with the NOAA Hurricane Hunters | Diane Stanitski and John Adler, illustrated by Bruce Cowden |